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In this study we investigate the role of the mechanisms at play in the magnitude of the land-sea warming contrast and its intermodel spread in the fifth coupled models intercomparison project (CMIP5) simulations. In this aim, an energy-balance model (EBM), with one box representing the land area and two other boxes the near-surface and the deep ocean, is developed. In particular, a simple parameterization of the horizontal energy transport (HET) change between these two regions is proposed. The EBM is shown to capture the variation of the land and the ocean temperature responses and of the land-sea warming ratio in different idealized climate change experiments. By using this framework, we first show that the land-sea warming contrast is explained by the asymmetry in the strength of the HET between the land and ocean and not by land-sea differences in radiative feedbacks. Then we use a method of analysis of variance to infer the contributors to the intermodel spread in the land-sea warming ratio of climate models participating to CMIP5. The main contributor is found to be the HET with a contribution of about 70 %. Finally, our results suggest that the asymmetric character of the HET dependency to the land and the ocean temperature responses may be primarily explained by the land-sea differences in surface specific humidity change for a given temperature change.

This study provides a comprehensive global analysis of the climate radiative feedbacks and the adjusted radiative forcing for a CO2 increase perturbation in the CNRM-CM5 climate model using the partial radiative perturbations (PRP) method. Some methodological key points of the PRP are investigated, with a particular focus on the consideration of the effect of fast adjustments. First, the standard PRP method is applied by neglecting certain fast adjustments. The effect of the field decorrelation is highlighted by performing a PRP across two different periods of a control experiment and by analyzing second-order terms. Sensitivity tests to the field substitution frequency, the sampling period and the perturbed experiment used are performed. The impact of the definition of the top of the climate system (top-of-the-atmosphere or tropopause) in the feedback estimate is also discussed. Secondly, the fast adjustment processes are taken into account by combining the PRP framework with the method of linear regression of the partial net radiative flux change against the mean surface air temperature change using a step forcing experiment. This method allows us to quantify the contribution of the different constituents to the forcing adjustment and to improve the estimation of the radiative feedbacks. It is shown that such decomposition allows the retrieval of the adjusted radiative forcing, the radiative feedbacks and the climate sensitivity as estimated with the linear regression method with a high level of accuracy, validating the partial decomposition.